1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the distributed construction, processing and management of information designating links or connections used in web pages and/or electronic mail or other distributed data. More specifically, the present invention relates to transforming a client's selection of desired content into a formal request that initiates the provision of the requested content in accordance with the options specified by the developer of said web page and/or electronic mail or other content.
2. Background of the Related Art
FIG. 1 depicts a prior art system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,662 to Sargent, incorporated herein by reference. A user terminal is connected through a publicly switched telephone network to a computer which responsively provides requested content contained in memory B to the user. The end user terminal consists of a display 10 receiving inputs from a character generator read only memory 9 subject to control from the display control 11 and directly from the display control 11 for the display of noncharacter data. The display control 11 also sends signals to the memory control 8 which in turn signals the memory A 7 capable of causing the transmission of a signal to the character generator ROM 9. The memory A 7 receives signals from a modem 6 which in turn receives signals from a signal generator 13 responsively connected to a key pad 12 and isolation and protection hardware 5 connected to the publicly switched telephone network 2, said publicly switched telephone network further connected to the content providing computer 1, said content stored in computer memory B.
FIG. 2 depicts the unit of information transmitted to the user terminal of FIG. 1 by the computer 1. Information is transferred from the computer 1 memory to the memory A 7 of the user terminal in blocks having two parts, said parts consisting of “hidden” information and displayed information. The displayed information consists of 480 16 bit words and the hidden information consists of 32 16 bit words. The display 10 shows the displayed information. The entire block of information from the computer 1 is stored in memory A 7, including the hidden information. The hidden information is used to translate digital key pad entries into the address of the block in the computer 1 memory B that is being requested by the user.
FIG. 3 depicts a system as in FIG. 1 except that the user terminal is augmented to contain memory 14 and logic 16 so that some responses to digital keypad 12 entries are possible without transmitting a signal over the modem 6 through the isolation and protection module 5 and onto the computer 1. The hidden information stored in memory B 14 is retrieved in response to a digital keypad 12 entry transmitted to the memory control 8 and through a connection 15 to memory B 14. Once the information is retrieved from memory B 14 and transmitted to the memory B logic unit 15, the memory logic unit 16 outputs a result through a connection 18 with the signal generator 13 which in turn transmits a signal to the modem 6 which modifies memory A 7, said modification of memory A causing a change in the screen display 10 as a result of causing the read only memory 9 storing a representation of the displayed image to change in response thereto.
Because the Sargent patent requires that the tables providing the correspondence between user supplied digital keys and information block addresses be manually configured and associated with each transmitted block of information, the system, if it could be adapted for use on the Internet, would require a web developer to manually fix the locations of each page of content in the host computer's memory. Moreover, although the Sargent patent envisions that the size of the block of information containing indexed addresses is not limited to 32 words, any system disclosed by the Sargent patent would have some fixed size hidden information block for each page. Thus, even if only one web page out of 1000 required complex addresses taking up 256 words of storage, all 1000 web pages would be required to reserve 256 words for page indexing. In addition, any change in the location of information in the serving computer would require that every page potentially referencing that page be revised to reflect the new location. In a system with hundreds of pages of content, hundreds of manually configured tables would have to be edited. Furthermore, the Sargent patent is restricted to a system which provides no means for multiple content providers to make changes in the way their information is represented. Consequently, each content provider would be dependent on a central computer operator to manage page references. In addition, all of the processing of links is done by a single information server. Thus the invention described in the Sargent patent does not support distributed link processing.
The Judson application WO09715020A1, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,673 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,737,619, are each incorporated herein by reference, and describe a method of browsing the World Wide Web over the Internet using a client machine supporting a graphical user interface and an Internet browser. The method locally stores, retrieves and outputs information objects to reduce the waiting time normally associated with the download of hypertext documents having high resolution graphics. The method begins, for example, as a web page is being displayed on the graphical user interface, the web page having a link to a hypertext document preferably located at a remote server. In response to the user clicking on the link, the link is activated by the browser to request downloading the hypertext document from the remote server to the graphical user interface of the client. While the client waits for a reply and/or as the hypertext document is being downloaded, the browser displays a previously-cached information object.
FIG. 4 depicts a method of the Judson application for the dynamic display of information objects during linking. In accordance with the method, a current web page is displayed 70. After the current web page is displayed, the information objects associated with the page are saved 72. The system then monitors the user's link activation selections waiting for to be activated 74. If the link is activated, two procedures are executed in parallel. First the client issues a TCP/IP request 76 and subsequently engages in the set up of a protocol for receiving the page referred to by the link. In parallel with said first step, the client retrieves the saved information objects from a previous download of the referenced page 80 and displays that information 82. While the referenced page is being downloaded, the saved version of the reference page is displayed 84. Once the download is complete, the downloaded page is saved 86 and displayed 70, thus restarting this process at the first step.
While the use of this method permits the user to view content from a previously loaded page while the requested page of information is refreshed, the method does not address the delivery of information content that has not been previously displayed. In addition, the method does not simplify the web developers page development task since the method depends on the addressing information manually encoded in the requested page to update the previously stored content. Furthermore, no provision is made in the Judson system to distribute the processing of links to (possibly remote) individual link servers. In a system supporting remote distributed link processing, a specific user request is redirected to a (possibly remote) link server which in turn routes a request to the server hosting the requested content. Although this system provides for local processing of a selected link, the local processing does not result in a further request being issued to a server hosting the requested content. Instead, local processing results in the display of a previously loaded page while the remotely hosted content is retrieved.
The Monier patent, U.S. Pat. No. 6,032,196, incorporated herein by reference, describes a table of web pages which is maintained by requesting a web page, receiving the requested web page, and identifying an address, such as a URL, of the received web page. A locator, such as a fingerprint, which represents the address of the received web page is entered into the table of web pages to maintain the table. The locator has a smaller size than the address.
While this method provides a means for accessing previously stored web pages while minimizing the time needed to test whether a link on a web page has already been retrieved, it does not simplify the process of developing and constructing the pages on a web site. The web developer must physically encode in the html of a web page the canonical URL of a page in order to ensure that the presence or absence of the page in Monier's local page will be properly detected.
Although the Monier patent uses a technique for reducing the size of URL's employed to reference a page, these reduced size tags do not effect the size or complexity of the web pages themselves. Instead, they reduce the possibility that recording failed attempts to locate a page in the local table will lead to excessive space demands. Moreover, in the Monier patent each link selected by the requesting client is processed by the website owner's web server.
In the Broder patent, U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,135, incorporated herein by reference, a server computer is provided for representing and navigating the connectivity of web pages. The web pages include links to other web pages. The links and web pages have associated names (URLs). The names of the Web pages are sorted in a memory of the connectivity server. The sorted names are delta encoded while periodically storing full names as checkpoints in the memory. Each delta encoded name and checkpoint has a unique identification. A list of pairs of identifications representing existent links is sorted twice, first according to the first identification of each pair to produce an inlist, and second according to the second identification of each pair to produce an outlist. An array of elements is stored in the memory and there is one array element for each web page. Each element includes a first pointer to one of the checkpoints, a second pointer to an associated inlist of the Web page, and a third pointer to an associated outlist of the web page. The array is indexed by a particular identification to locate connected web pages.
Although it is possible to use the connectivity server to determine whether two web pages are connected, the method is dependent on the use of a full canonical URL for each page. Consequently the method does not simplify the construction of web pages containing complex links. Moreover, determining whether two web pages are connected does not lead to the construction of address information needed to access streaming application servers.
The object of this invention in the Michael Application, JP10222541A2, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 6,807,570 B1, and are both incorporated herein by reference, is to attain the high speed access of a web page by a user. The system attempts to achieve this objective by automatically pre-loading another selected web page and an associated graphics file. A client is connected through a communication line with the World Wide Web. A server is provided with a web page access mechanism and program that permits the server, instead of the client, to request web pages from a disk or another server. Then, a web page is read and a link marked as the object of primary load is identified. At that time, when another web page and related graphics corresponding to this link are present and the link is selected, the related graphics are automatically preloaded to the storage device of the client web browser.
Although the Michael patent utilizes a special server for retrieving web pages and their associated graphical content prior to an explicit request of a user, the html reference addresses used to obtain those pages in advance are full canonical URLs. Consequently, the web developer is not spared from having to manage the detailed requests needed to obtain content from a server.
The Bates application, JP11288426A2, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 6,222,541 B1, both of which are incorporated herein by reference, attempts to solve the problem of quickly and efficiently locating and selecting a hyper text link embedded in web page by connecting a memory to one processor and providing a link selecting mechanism inside the memory. In a system, one processor is provided. A memory is connected to the processor. The memory is provided with a web browser, an operating system and a link selection mechanism. The link selection mechanism highlights links embedded in the part of the web page that are within a range of the page visible to the user.
Although highlighting links on a web page reduces the amount of effort required of a user to manually locate the link for selection, this mechanism does not simplify the complexity of the web page addresses used in the web page's underlying HTML source. Consequently, the use of this method would not simplify the underlying process of getting access to distributed content hosted on remote servers. Furthermore, the Bates application does not disclose a system or method for distributed link processing. Each link selected by the user would presumably be directed to the web site owner's web site for conversion to the proper request for remotely distributed content.
The Gustaffson application, WO9921109A3, incorporated herein by reference, describes a method of creating a link in a web page viewed in a browser. The link thereby created leads to a plurality of possible endpoints. The method comprises the steps of providing an address table in the web page host which includes the addresses of possible pages at which a given web page may point and when a user clicks on the link, selecting one of the possible web pages and setting up a connection to that page.
This invention allows a web page developer to redirect a clicking user to one of limited set of web pages. However, the web developer must still manually encode the html addresses. Furthermore, it would still be necessary under this invention to manually construct references to streaming application servers.
The Goodman patent, U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,929, incorporated herein by reference, describes a link referral system including a classification arrangement for classifying web pages that the system that the system retrieves over the World Wide Web. In assigning a link in a web page to a particular classification, the classification arrangement originally establishes the classification using the name for the particular section of the web page in which the link is located. Using statistical analysis of the occurrence of related inks within sections of a number of diverse web pages, some of which are named sections, the system creates classifications of links under both named classifications as well as anonymous classifications of links that co-occur with a high degree of probability. To minimize errors in the statistical analysis, the classification arrangement determines whether different world wide web addresses (so called “URLs”) which are used to access the web pages in fact identify the same web page. The classification information is used to supplement web pages retrieved by a client through the link referral system to indicate the availability of related link information from the link referral system. In addition, the link referral system can provide related link information to the client in response to requests, identifying particular links or classifications from the client.
Although this invention provides for the automatic categorization of web pages using statistics based on the distribution of common links, that categorization does not effect the processing associated with the selection of a particular link. While the processing of links described in Goodman may facilitate the computation of the relationships between links, the Goodman patent does not distribute the processing of links selected as a result of that categorization to multiple link servers.
Each of the prior art inventions described above addresses some aspect of managing and processing the links used to access remotely stored information either on the Internet or through a more limited telephone network connection. Yet, in no case do these prior art inventions appreciate the problems we have identified associated with forcing a single centralized server, such as a web server, to process all links that a web developer might use to specify that particular information content is to be supplied to a user. Consequently, web developers relying on the technology of the prior art are subject to a complex content specification task that remains dependent on the features of a particular web server. Providers of innovative content on the Internet, moreover, are dependent on a plurality of independent web servers choosing to adopt system modifications that would enable access to the new content. Furthermore, once the core technology of the invention herein described is made available, we have determined that it can be used to enable the web developer to shift arbitrary web management tasks to a remote server specifically dedicated to performing the task efficiently. For example, a remote link server could handle user accounting for a pay per view system for a plurality of web sites and web servers.